The present invention is designed to be provide a social application for smart cellular telephones and the world wide web to enable people to 1) locate and communicate with other people or groups they have not yet met but with whom they share similar interests or common goals or 2) locate resources for collaboration, buying or selling In targeted marketing (e.g., buying and selling), it is often desirable to provide information to select individuals located in a certain geographic area. The methods and systems of the invention provide a mobile computing device application-based system that enables people to contact one another within each of three broad categories of common purposes: social networking, e-commerce (buying and selling) and common interests or collaboration. Thus, people are able to contact others with similar interests, enabling quick and easy location and communication.
There are a number of technologies known in the art aimed at facilitating communications between users of mobile computing devices who are within close physical proximity. For example, with MIT's Serendipity system users create profiles for themselves and the people they would like to meet. See http://reality.media.mit.edu/serendipity.php [retrieved on 2011 Oct. 6]. However, in the Serendipity system, user information exchanged via short-range radio between mobile devices must then be transmitted over a long-range communications network in order to connect proximate users, see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 7,877,082, expending valuable network resources and mobile device battery power. Bluetooth technology, which allows mobile devices to communicate directly with each other, enables short-range communications between mobile devices but is subject to limitations including slow data transfer rates and susceptibility to interference.
In short, the mobile social matching/messaging services disclosed in the prior art have significant shortcomings, including obstacles relating to the proximity detection capabilities of long-range communications systems and bandwidth limitations of short-range radio frequency technology. See U.S. Pub. No. 2007/0037574 A1.